Birthday Update
This Friday was my 23rd birthday. In the states,
I don’t spend a lot of time celebrating my birthdays. It always seemed like a
pretty arbitrary day to celebrate; it wasn’t like I had accomplished anything.
My thought was if I was going to be celebrating anything, it should be the
effort my mom put forward to give birth to me. So, mom, thank you! And
Congratulations on my birthday!
This year though, without my typical gaggle of friends and
family to surround me, I was not really looking forward to my birthday and
surprisingly missing celebrating it. I woke up, feeling like it wasn’t
different from any other day here in hot Africa. But then the calls starting
coming in. My whole family called me, including my grandparents. Any day that I
get to talk to anyone is a celebration in itself, let alone everyone in my
family!
My younger sister, Katie, had also sent me envelope, written
all over it that it couldn’t be opened until my birthday. So I sat down with my
coffee and opened it, expecting a cute card. In the cute card was a USB drive,
which I promptly checked out. And lo and behold, here was my family and entire
gaggle of friends wishing me a happy birthday. They had all put together a
thirty minute video to wish me a happy birthday and send along their love and
support. I laughed and cried as I watched all these people I watched them
dance, jump, and talk across my screen. It was the best birthday present I
could have possibly received. Thank you to all who contributed. Since Friday,
I’ve watched the video 5 times. I imagine this will become my rainy day go-to
ritual, and I’m pretty excited about it.
The rest of the day, I spent some time getting stuff
together before heading out to Mokolo. There I met up with Luke, my post mate,
and some other volunteers in the Mokolo cluster to celebrate. We went all
American with salads, PB and J’s and even some sausage from Portugal (where
someone has recently returned from a vacation). There was even presents: I got
chocolate, a beautiful bracelet, and a jar of “stool sample” or homemade peanut
butter accompanied by a lovely poem. Tina even made me a cake! Carrot cake with
real icing! It was an awesome night.
The next morning we all headed out to Maroua for our
regional meeting, after which we resumed festivities. It was also the birthday
of another volunteer up here, so we celebrated together. Our friends had made
us a cake and we all went out to dinner. From there the night got crazy. We bar
hopped for a few hours before heading to a local club. There were about 20
volunteers taking this club by storm. We danced four hours, harassing the DJ
into playing some American music along with the Cameroonian. At some point
during the night, a couple of us decided we needed a pick-me-up and grabbed
some Kola nuts. These are a traditional food that is full of caffeine. We
danced until 4 am and then came home and celebrated some more at the transit
house.
I couldn’t sleep because of the Cola nuts so stayed up to
skype with some friends. It was amazing. I got passed around and saw some of my
best friends from college for the first time in months!
Anyways, bottom line is, we all celebrated Cameroonian
style. I had an amazing time and it was one of my best birthdays ever. I miss
home more than ever right now but am so grateful that there are so many people
on that side of the world who love me and support me in my crazy endeavors. Thank
you guys!
This week, I’ll be getting ready for my meeting with my
women’s group on Saturday. We’ll be covering Malaria. In addition, we’ve
started doing presentation with our vaccinations in the bush. Right now we’re
teaching eye health as trachoma and pink eye are a huge problem right now. I’m
heading back to post today in a few hours and am ready for a week of work.
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